


just dancing along

by abeillle



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Death, SBURB Parallels, non-sburb AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:31:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1881750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abeillle/pseuds/abeillle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He lived in a bungalow with a white picket fence, and slept with all the windows open.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just dancing along

**Author's Note:**

> (26/01/16) A quick note before you read: this work was done when I was younger and it is very poorly written. If you have ever wanted a perfect example of mischaracterisation, inelegance, melodrama, unresolved plot points, and really bad purple prose (all in a thousand words!) well, here you go. I used to fix the more obvious mistakes as time went on, but I'm just going to leave it alone now, and keep it up for posterity.

It is a cold, dreary day, and the wind howls through the small cemetery.

Now, Dave Strider is not the type of man who finds enlightenment in signs, nor does he believe in a god - he is certain that if he pulled back the curtains of the universe, he would find an empty stage. But on this disgusting, small-town Washington day, something changes, and Dave notes with ice-cold amusement that the day John Egbert died was also the day the sky stopped smiling.

Dave blinks, finds his way back from his thoughts. He tunes in, listens, tunes out. Someone is talking, a monotone buzz that he associates with the taste of cold coffee and the top of soda cans. The word are vapid and hollow: _Brave. Kind. Will be missed_. Dave wishes they would stop. John Egbert was not the simple, empty, two-dimensional person they are describing. John had a childish smile, gave hugs to everyone, and ordered extra bell peppers on his pizza. John Egbert was the spring breeze. John Egbert was the fucking sun.

The voice drones on, and Dave doesn’t want to listen, so he stands up and walks away. His hands are shoved in his jacket pockets, and there is a strange, diluted coldness seeping through his heart.

John Egbert was twenty-six on Tuesday, turned twenty-seven on Wednesday, and was six feet under by Thursday. _He died in his sleep,_ the man had said, eyes filled with sadness-- no, not sadness. Sympathy. _Didn’t get enough air._

John Egbert was going to get married. He lived in a bungalow with a white picket fence, and slept with all the windows open.

 

**…**

 

Rose Lalonde had a pretty, cruel face, hiding an even prettier, crueler brain. She could do math like a calculator and had a vocabulary that beat the Oxford dictionary. Her wit was as sharp as her violet-eyed glare, her lips as dry as her humour.

 _She could have been anyone, or done anything,_ Dave reminiscences in a sterile fashion. He picks apart memories with latex gloves and a lab coat: in a way that is so parallel to hers, cold and distant.

 

 _She died a hero’s death,_ says a voice. _Sacrificed herself to save others._ Dave tunes it out. It is an open casket funeral, and he is too busy watching Rose’s chest not sink and fall, and thinking about how aside from that, she looks exactly the same as she did when she was alive-- cold and apathetic.

And the voice, whoever it belongs to, is wrong. Rose Lalonde was never a hero. She cared about her own life, and about saving other people’s lives about as much as she cared for everything else, which was Secretly if at All. He knows with unyielding certainty that she had analysed the situation perfectly, and proceeded to take the most robust and beneficial course of action. It was merely a coincidence that it happened to involve saving others, and not herself.

Rose Lalonde’s brain could probably rip apart the fabric of a smaller metaphorical universe. Calculating possible outcomes in a millisecond must have been child’s play to her; she knew exactly what would happen to him if she died. Then she went ahead and did it anyway.

 

Dave stays for the entire service, this time. Afterwards, he fumbles through his wallet, finding an astounding amount of 24.53$. He drives himself to the nearest liquor store, and gets the strongest shit twenty four and a half dollars can buy.

 

**…**

 

Jade Harley was also smart, but in a different way, one that entailed science textbooks and studying and highlighter pens tucked behind one ear. She worked hard, got far, and deserved everything she fucking achieved.

Jade worked in some NASA-level lab, doing science-y crap that Dave knew jack shit about, except that it involved space and a lot of numbers. She grew her hair out, drank decaf, and brought her helldog with her everywhere. She smiled, a lot. God, she was just so genuinely _happy._

 

Dave Strider blinks, slowly, painstakingly; shutting his eyes and letting them flutter open like butterfly wings. He blinks, again.

Jade is tucked neatly into the coffin, dressed in a rather dazzling green and black dress, faced twisted in an unnaturally calm expression. Dave tries to call to mind a time when she wore the damned glittery thing, and comes up short. They should have buried her in her work uniform, or her beige skirt, or even her fucking yellow pyjamas. This isn’t Jade.

Something catches in Dave’s throat-- perhaps the sound of all the words he’s left unsaid, he thinks, tearing him apart from the inside. It’s every mistake he’s ever made, and it’s as cold as John’s engagement ring, still on his finger, a promise buried with him. It's cold and he hurts, like what broke his heart is now methodically smashing its pieces again and again until they are so small that they will never fit together again.

He tries to remember what it feels like to not be drowning.

 

**…**

 

It is a tepid Texan day, and the windows of Dave’s apartment are cracked open, letting the blare of midday traffic waft inside. The sun pours in from behind his curtains. It stains the floor with dancing splotches of light that flutter around, gliding lazily in the summer breeze.

Dave’s turntables churn and sing, a steady _thump-thump-thump_ bassline filling the room. He turns the music off, but it remains in his head, ticking like clockwork. Completely in sync. He wonders if that’s a normal thing, if that happens to regular people, then swiftly pushes the thought away. Nothing about Dave Strider is even remotely close to sane.

He thinks about the beat that’s always in his head, the one he tries and fails to drown out with music, the rhythm that resounds like clock strikes in his heart. Consciously, this time, he tries to make it stop. It persists.

There is a spot of chipping paint on the wall. Dave focuses on it, then blurs it out like background noise. He begins to understand, all at once and years too late. He should have listened closer. He was deluding himself. He was never the composer- he was only listening to the song, swaying with the ups and downs, hoping for it to never end. Just dancing along.


End file.
